3Doodler

This morning I saw that one of my friends had a Kickstarter page for a new invention, a 3-D printing pen.

This evening I noticed that it had exceeded his fundraising target by half a million dollars. If I hadn't been sitting down, I might have fallen over.

While Confucius might have told us there is no happier sight than seeing an old friend fall from a high roof, it's also very heartening to see somebody you know succeed in such a superlative manner.

I did read somebody moaning on a forum that it was just a glorified glue gun. I don't think it is. Glue guns were things we used as schoolboys to cover ourselves in blazingly hot adhesives and suffer facial burns, whereas (I think) part of the cleverness of the 3Doodler is how it cools the plastic as it leaves the body of the pen.

Or my friend is actually just very evil, and wants to get people to spray scalding plastic over themselves.

I don't think I'd buy one myself, sadly, because I can't think of anything that I want to make with what is effectively a handheld freeform three-dimensional printer. That's sad because I remember those far off days as a child when I enjoyed knitting, but perhaps it's for the best that I recognise my limitations. Or because if I did have a 3Doodler, I'd do something rude with it, and with a baby on the way we don't want an apartment filled with spidery, plastic obscenities.

Well, I don't imagine my wife wants homemade, spidery, plastic obscenities. The sort we buy from shops are probably quite acceptable.

It will be interesting to see what everyone else makes of it. And makes from it. It's at times like these that I remember I am living in the future after all.